Another Country

“They’d discussed it earlier, in the days of their friendship: the need to reach a certain phase in one’s life, to become a householder, to enter the world and leave behind the selfish days of youth.”

Paris, London, Bombay: three cities form a backdrop to a journey through Leela’s twenties at the dawn of the new millennium, as she learns to negotiate the world, work, relationships and sex, and find some measure of authenticity. Sharp, funny, and melancholy, Another Country brings a cool eye to friendship, love, and the idea of belonging in its movements through old and new worlds. As with her debut, Saraswati Park (2010), which won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Betty Trask Prize and India’s Vodafone Crossword Prize, Anjali Joseph’s beautiful, clear writing captures exactly both emotions and surroundings.

‘beautifully delineated… highly skilled at evoking a sense of place… It is a measure of Joseph’s skill that despite being spiky, hopelessly indecisive and eternally dissatisfied, “the eternal wanderer with no destination to aim for”, Leela remains such a sympathetic protagonist. The writing throughout is cool and clear, and while the overall tone of the novel is hauntingly melancholic, it is also distinguished by a refreshingly abrasive wit.’ Peter Parker, The Sunday Times

‘hugely exciting as a piece of writing… the slower rhythms of Another Country quickly become completely engrossing, and Joseph is particularly perceptive about the sense of home, and where that might be in the migratory 21st-century world.’ Ben East, The National